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S he found me .

Riley Dragoon would be laughing his ass off right now. Goddess damn that fucking elemental for being right.

Through the pain of the imbecile sawing out my insides and the haze of my life being drained out of me, I felt her again—my soulmate.

I couldn’t keep the grin from spreading across my face even as the sickening squelch of a knife punctured my body. All this fucking time and she was the one who found me—chained to a tree with irons, in the middle of the Wildwoods, bleeding out, and dying. How embarrassing.

I glared at my torturer with renewed strength. “What’s wrong Jurin, have you tired already?”

Spitting out my own blood, I watched as it splattered on his already disgusting boots—it improved them.

“You know there are herbs that help you with stamina.” I snickered despite the black dots dancing across my vision. “I’m sure your bed partners would appreciate it, although with that face, I doubt you have any.”

The shifter named Jurin sneered. “Shall I make it the same for you? I believe you don't need this to talk….” His knife followed the trail of blood seeping down my torso and pressed threateningly against my dick.

I wrenched on the iron chains draining my shifter power and snarled as it seared my flesh. The pain was worth seeing the flicker of fear flash in my torturers muddy brown eyes.

Iron. A stupid weakness. Why our Goddess Faerie even gave us any weakness at all was beyond my understanding...perhaps it was some sort of kink she had.

“If you’re so worried about my dick, Jurin, then take these irons off and let me show you how a real male performs.” I bared my teeth at him, feeling my own blood drip from my mouth, too bad it wasn't his.

Jurin laughed up into the dark night. “You hear that boys?” He called over his shoulder. “Our poor, dear, golden one would like me to take off his irons.”

The other three shifters in the camp laughed along with him.. The fae were otherworldly creatures. Dark, vicious, deadly…but still enthrallingly beautiful, powerful, enchanting. Unfortunately, for these four, their grotesqueness on the inside had festered to the outside.

Repulsed, I spat again on the forest floor.

Jurin dogged it, his face contorting into a sneer. “How fucking stupid do you think we are? We knew who you were the moment you stepped into our camp.”

I attempted to shrug, the smell of my flesh burning sending me flashbacks of a time passed. Those memories did not control me…that’s what the healer had said.

I swallowed down the nausea. “Stupid enough to fool you four into actually thinking you could capture me unwillingly.”

Although, bleeding out, on the cusp of death, hadn’t been part of the goddess damn plan.

Our heads snapped up at the long howl that pierced the cold night air.

The sound sent Jurin stumbling from me with alarm and the other shifter scrambling to their feet, looking wearily around them.

They were too stupid to notice the way the silver branches of the Wildwoods leaned hungrily inward and the shadows around the firelight darkened with anticipation.

I chuckled. A cù-sìth call. Faerie could not have provided a better opportunity.

“What in the Sheol was that?” One of Jurin’s cronies, Tomac, whispered fearfully.

I snorted. How were these bastards even shifters if they couldn’t distinguish a cù-sìth howl?

A call from these massive black hounds of Faerie meant your death was forthcoming.

A true shifter would know that which was why it was a mistake for them to come here.

Shifters resided in The West Isles for a reason and we were at the top of our food chain there.

But not here in Faerie.

From the gentle time warping wisps, to the smallest needle biting gnomes, and the great fierce weretrees of old, everything here was a beast that wanted to kill you first and ask questions later.

I smirked when three more howls joined the first.

Four howls.

Four deaths.

There was no guarantee that one of those howls wasn’t for me, but at least three of these assholes were going down with me. Plus I had the weretree, keeping my mission safe in its silvery gnarled branches. If I didn’t survive, he would make sure it was delivered to her safely.

I spat out the bitter taste in my mouth, regret splintering my chest like another knife wound.

I had wanted to see the blazing emerald green of her eyes—eyes that everyone whispered about but I never had the pleasure of seeing.

I had wanted to touch her soft pale skin—to feel it reverently against my lips and purge it of the invisible scars I knew were there.

My vision blurred, darkness creeping in my periphery. I felt the hot sting of a single tear slide down my face and I closed my eyes. I was not ready for Sheol but it was here for me anyway.

Darkness swirled around me. Then I gasped—a punch in my gut full of golden light spilled into my veins, it thrummed in my body, it blasted my senses.

Was this Sheol?

My eyes snapped open and I inhaled sharply. I was still in Faerie, still in this goddess forsaken camp, still chained to the damn tree but instead of dying…I was healing .

I groaned at the pleasurable tingling of my injured body knitting itself back together, my fractured bones snapping back into place, and the pulsating energy that sent my heart racing.

This power was…reverent, it was euphoric, it was life. It tasted of our long lost goddess—a goddess who had abandoned us to our cursed sterile fate thousands of years ago.

A fate that had driven the Faerie queen mad, destroyed the life of the one destined to save us, and sent me on a one hundred year search to find her again.

And yet…here the goddess power was. Present and alive—and saving me.

“What the Faerie fuck? Who healed him?” Jurin snarled, whirling around and pointing at his comrades. “I told you idiots to not fucking heal him.”

“It wasn’t us.” One of them cried out.

I chuckled, the power of the goddess making me higher than the Red Cap Mountains—I fucking missed those looming peaks of my homeland.

“She’ssssss comingggggg,” I slurred, seeing the shadows darken unnaturally.

“Whatsss do you do when the darknessssss comes.” I started singing boisterously at the top of my lungs.

“Dooooo you hide or dooooooo you runnnn.” A long slurring laugh escaped me before I shouted.

“Nay. Neither…what you neeeddd is the rising ssuuuunnnn.”

“Shut him up. Something is out there.” One of Jurin’s goons whispered, a bear shifter with curly brown hair and dark brown eyes that were almost black. I wanted to rip his traitorous face off.

Almost one hundred years ago, they had joined the queen of Faerie, betrayed our people, and attempted a coup against the shifter throne.

Until the queen abandoned them here…a lunatic if I ever saw one, the Faerie queen’s obsession to cure the fae courts of their infertility ultimately led to her own death.

At least that's what most believed. I believed otherwise.

All four of the shifter traitors startled when the furious flapping of a chickadee swooped into the camp.

I could not control the blast of laughter booming deep from my belly at their skittish reaction.

“Doooo youuuu hide or do youuu ruuun.” I whispered, my eyes latching on to the appearance of the sexy silhouette stepping out from the rolling darkness.

Shadows fell away from her fine figure like a silk dress falling off her bare shoulders.

My mouth went dry, my lips parted with awe.

Bright emerald green eyes, piercing and fierce, striking and gorgeous, connected with my own for the very first time, and I never saw anything more beautiful.

I never would again.

Finally.

On my death’s door, the one I had been searching for, the one I was dying for.

Remnant Ezra Solaire Dark

The last shadow fae.

My lost soulmate…found at last.